Mindfulness is an emerging area in psychology with the potential to be useful in our everyday lives, says Dr. Michael Bordieri of Murray State's Department of Psychology. It's not a new psychological discovery, but has been a part of spiritual practices of Buddhism and eastern religion traditions for a millennia. Within the past 30 years or so, western medicine and psychology has taken interested in the practice of mindfulness as a way of paying attention to one's thoughts. On Sounds Good, Tracy Ross speaks with Dr. Bordieri about understanding mindfulness and ways to practice it in everyday life.
Dr. Bordieri cites John Kabat-Zinn for bringing the concept of mindfulness to the west in the 90s, with his book Full Catastrophe Living, where the idea of mindfulness can be applied as a curative process. Often we go through life on autopilot, Dr. Bordieri says, when you drive somewhere and you don't even know how you got there. It's part of what we do as humans. Mindfulness is a way of practicing getting in touch with the here and now, the present moment.
We often spend a lot of time thinking about what we have to do, with to-do lists running in our heads. Or we'll spend time thinking about the past, "I can't believe I said that!" With mindfulness, the idea is to live in the present. It's a practice and a skill, he says, not a way of being all the time, but a way of showing up to the moment in a non-judgmental way. We can often get caught up in our thoughts and experiences and judge them: okay or not okay, acceptable or not, fair or unfair, right or wrong... While these aren't necessarily bad - the ability to plan ahead isn't a bad thing - sometimes it can get us stuck.
There's emerging evidence that mindfulness can be useful in a broad spectrum of physical and psychological difficulties, presenting a new way of relating to problems like stress in the workplace. Dr. Bordieri says earlier this year, he was giving a talk about mindfulness and was running late in traffic, yelling at the people in front of him. He realized in this moment that this was exactly the opposite of mindfulness. He then said to himself that he will either be late or not and that yelling at people and getting worked up isn't going to change the fact if he's late or not. Simply take a moment or two and focus on breathing, he says. In those situations when you're overwhelmed, mindfulness can be most useful. Doctors in an emergency room setting are trained to take a couple breaths before saying or doing anything.
Dr. Bordieri points out that mindfulness isn't about feeling better or changing your emotions and experience, but giving yourself space to feel what you're feeling. Emotions aren't necessarily bad, they serve a function for us - giving us information. But these emotions don't have to be something that we're struggling with, rather something we take along with us. So many times in our culture we get the message that we want to get rid of the bad feelings and bring in the good feelings, he says, but sometimes we don't get to choose how we feel. Mindfulness is like laying out a welcome mat for these feelings.
